Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "People understand very well.":
I think it was Councillor Gallo [ or Ballard ] who said,
" You are never wrong if you engage the electorate. "
I believe at the time it was to justify sending letters to those near the Minto land without bothering to mention it to his fellow councillors.
****************
The strategy has stood the Councillor in good stead.
The first time resident John Gallo presented to Council in my time was the 2003/6 term.
He was president of the Ratepayers Association. The town had received a site plan application for a designated site in the vicinity of his home.
It had been designated for high density before construction of the neighborhood town houses.
The designation was to serve as a buffer between residential and commercial/industrial.
Neighbors had been using the property. some had even installed gates in backyard fences.
Horrifying images were presented to Council of what would transpire if a seniors facility
were to be allowed.
Mr. Gallo urged the town to buy the land for a neighborhood park.
The former Mayor promised the Hydro transmission lines would be buried if she were elected.
The neighborhood gave her the votes she needed to beat the incumbent Mayor.
Mr. Gallo was a candidate although not successful.
He called me the morning after to ask that I step aside and make way for himself.
When former Councillor Grace Marsh resigned from office. Mr. Gallo accepted appointment
to fill the vacancy in the face of community demand for a by -election.
We all know the story about the 6 acre unwanted school site on Mavrinac .
Councillor Gallo knocked on doors in that neighborhood to alert the residents to the vacant site site and that in his view should be purchased by the town for a park.
He hosted a rally of neighbors at a town hall meeting to demand the town acquire the land for a park.
He stated .along with others that of course he would not suggest the town should pay $6 million for the site.
Nw the town is litigating,to compel the developer to sell the land to the town for a fraction of its value.
That should make for a juicy morsel in a re-election campaign except that most Councillors and the Mayor are in support.
Councillor Thompson is not. Nor am I.
The neighborhood by the way is fully serviced with parks.
It's not about adding a park.
It's about preventing residential development on the site .... and additional
assessment revenue.
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"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King
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13 comments:
He’s kind of put in between rock and a hard spot. Being an appointed councillor his job is to make decisions for the good of all residents. If the area didn't have any parks, that would be one thing…but it has few. Development would be the right thing for all Aurora. But that area I believe gave him the votes to get him on council, which means that they can take him out if he doesn't give them his full support and comes through for them. I guess he’s chosen the latter.
Legal stuff is tricky so I'll keep this very general -
The town is litigating but that might just apply to this Council. A new one might come in that realizes the need for increased revenues & residential development. The chicanes have gone with that Council.
He should go back to being the president of the ratepayers association and take his hirsute with him.
I am hedging on Cllr Thompson. most of the rest have been sorted. Tuesday will be the decider if he knocks the 3-house deal out of the park for the duration of the term.
Mr Gallo isn't even fully engaged as a councillor. There is no way he could be mayor.
19:54
What idiot bruited this?
We really need that revenue especially with the way Council is spending. It should be a slam-dunk.
Christopher Watts has published an article dated today headed "A budget doesn't make you creative. A lack of budget does.
It should be compulsory reading for all taxpayers.
I will quote from the closing remarks:
"Over this term of council the Communifications department budget has seen an increase of $200,000.
They are poised to commit $580,000 in 2014.
This works out to over $10 per Auroran.
If the Communications Departments's "strategic plan" was reviewed by the "Executive Management Team" or anyone at the council table I would like to hear how the department's performance even remotely aligns with the principles of innovation or sustainability in the strategic plan.
Perhaps members of council are afraid of being labelled as micro-managers if they do anything to change course.
On the flip side they lose the ability to claim that they have been fiscally responsible if they don't.
The fact that the Communications department has a strategic plan at all just ads insult to injury and serves to validate P.J. O'Rourke's belief:
'It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.'
Aurora calls it a budget.
The more our elective representatives budge, the less we get."
Possibly, because we follow Aurora politics quite closely, comments such as the above are not surprising. Indeed they are the norm.
If Aurora were a business, the members of the Executive Management Team, the Mayor and six of eight members of council would now be looking for work.
Unfortunately we can't do anything about those who have been elected until October, but the others should have a real talking to.
I can't end this without a passing reference to the negotiating strategy being proposed by the head of the Executive Management Team in connection with the purchase of certain real estate on the west side of Yonge Street a few blocks north of Wellington. This is complete and utter nonsense and for this alone he should be shown the door.
@21:16
I don't think that person was an idiot. Cllr Gallo stays safely with his red herring and picayune matters and sometimes can't even find the right pages for that.
10:12
I meant to say that anyone who considers Gallo as a potential mayor is an idiot.
21:16
To paraphrase:
Those who do not study their history are doomed to repeat it
11:03
That would have been the councillor himself. In his Auroran interview. Said he was waiting for the right time or some-such.
I believe Mr Gallo is like the loss-leaders in the grocery stores. Just provided as a distraction for the time being.
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